public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.352
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN FAILED STATES AND POST-CONFLICT
SOCIETIES: CORE CONCEPTS AND CROSS-CUTTING THEMES
DERICK W. BRINKERHOFF*
Research Triangle Institute, Washington DC, USA
SUMMARY
This overview article looks at the emergence of failed and post-conflict states on the international relations and assistance
agenda, and at the importance of governance in establishing peace, pursuing state reconstruction and preventing conflict. It
introduces the topic of the special issue, how effective governance can be re-established following societal conflict or war. After
a brief review of the terminology of failed states, post-conflict and governance, the article discusses governance reconstruction
in terms of three dimensions: reconstituting legitimacy, re-establishing security and rebuilding effectiveness. The article summarises key points made by the contributors to the special issue, who look at donor governance reconstruction agendas, security-sector governance and subnational governance. Several common themes emerge and are elaborated upon: similarities
between development and post-conflict assistance; linkages among governance’s legitimacy, effectiveness and security dimensions; rebuilding versus creating governance systems; local versus national governance reconstruction; formal versus informal
governance. The article concludes with a call for further work to elaborate frameworks that can incorporate the particulars of
individual countries in addressing legitimacy, security and effectiveness. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
INTRODUCTION
Emerging with increased intensity since the 1990s, peace-building and reconstruction of post-conflict and war-torn
societies have become central to today’s international relations and assistance agendas. Practically all bilateral and
multilateral international development agencies have established units to address post-conflict transitions and
socioeconomic rehabilitation, as complements to their long-standing humanitarian and emergency response programmes. A well recognised contributor to the outbreak of conflict and war is state failure, which has garnered
more attention in the wake of the ‘war on terrorism’ as holding implications not simply for those citizens who live
in failing and failed states, but for the rest of the world as well. Failing and failed states can offer havens for terrorists to conduct operations that endanger the lives of citizens residing far from those countries. Failed states have
been referred to as a ‘sleeping giant’ threat that requires concerted attention (CGD, 2004). Thus, the rationales for
international intervention have expanded beyond humanitarian and development objectives to encompass national
and global security (see Rice, 2003; Koppell and Sharma, 2003).
The role of state failure as cause and consequence of conflict and civil war has highlighted the importance of
governance in establishing peace, pursuing state reconstruction and avoiding conflict in the first place. While practitioners and scholars have generated substantial knowledge and experience-based lessons for building governance
in countries with functioning governments and relative stability, the state of knowledge and practice regarding the
establishment and/or reconstitution of effective governance in post-conflict and war-torn societies is still in its
infancy. The challenges endemic to all efforts at institutional design and institution-building are particularly salient
in failed and failing states, where there is an imperative to construct new institutions or reconstruct weakened or
collapsed ones and a sense of urgency to do so quickly.
*Correspondence to: D. W. Brinkerhoff, Research Triangle Institute, 1615 M Street NW, Suite 740, Washington, DC 20036, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
4
D. W. BRINKERHOFF
This special issue seeks to contribute to filling this knowledge and practice gap. It addresses the broad question
of how effective governance can be re-established in the wake of serious societal conflict or war. Each article
explores an aspect of this question: facilitative or constraining environmental factors, the implications of conflicting reconstruction policy and programme agendas, the roles of the various actors involved and potentially promising strategies and approaches. Comprehensive treatment of these issues would require extensive research and
investigation, far beyond the contributions in this journal issue. The collection offers incremental additions to
the continuing exploration and debate.
This overview article introduces the symposium articles, highlighting their attention to several key factors and
efforts to rebuild governance and discusses findings with respect to institution-building strategies and programmes
in post-conflict/war-torn societies. The article concludes by identifying some common themes, policy implications
and thoughts on a future research agenda.
CLARIFYING CONCEPTS
Before turning to the contents of this volume, a few words about key concepts are in order. The categories used to
characterise the analytic and operational terrain of interest describe broadly recognisable phenomena to both scholars and practitioners. However, the terminology applied to failed states, conflict and post-conflict and governance
is often imprecise. In general, a failed state is characterised by: (a) breakdown of law and order where state institutions lose their monopoly on the legitimate use of force and are unable to protect their citizens, or those institutions
are used to oppress and terrorise citizens; (b) weak or disintegrated capacity to respond to citizens’ needs and
desires, provide basic public services, assure citizens’ welfare or support normal economic activity; (c) at the international level, lack of a credible entity that represents the state beyond its borders (see Thurer, 1999; Milliken and
Krause, 2002; Rotberg, 2002).1
Clearly, a key issue is the degree to which a given state exhibits these characteristics. The label, failed state, has
been employed to describe extreme cases of collapse, such as Somalia or Liberia, where civil and social authority
have disintegrated and a Hobbesian anarchic clash of all against all prevails. Many more countries, though, confront less drastic situations and vary in the extent to which they have failed or risk failing to provide for the welfare
of their citizens, supply basic security or facilitate equitable economic growth.2 At this less extreme, opposite end
of the spectrum, state failure becomes nearly indistinguishable from the status of many, if not most, poor countries,
which suffer from institutional weaknesses and capacity gaps. Various analyses posit more discriminating terminology, allowing for finer-grained categorisation. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), for
example, has sought to clarify distinctions among failed, failing, fragile and recovering states through development
of a performance-based typology.3
Similarly, conflict and post-conflict (i.e. peace) are relative terms as well, subject to gradations and qualifiers.
Post-conflict rarely means that violence and strife have ceased at a given moment in all corners of a country’s
territory. In practice, most post-conflict reconstruction efforts take place in situations where conflict has subsided
to a greater or lesser degree, but is ongoing or recurring in some parts of the country. As Doyle and Sambanis
observe, ‘no peace is perfect. Public violence . . . never gets completely eliminated. . . . We should thus consider
peace to be a spectrum ranging from insecure to secure’ (1999, p. 1). The peace-building literature has evolved a
more nuanced perspective on conflict, moving away from a linear conception, similar to the recognition of the
artificiality of the relief-to-development continuum (see de Zeeuw, 2001). Greater understanding of conflict
dynamics has led in turn to intervention designs that recognise this complexity. For example, Leatherman et al.
(1999, p. 8) argue that conflict interventions need ‘a rehabilitative dimension oriented to the past, a resolutive
dimension oriented to the present, and a preventive dimension oriented to both the present and future’.
1
For an informative review of the literature that focuses on the dynamics of state failure, see Carment (2003). See also the State Failure Task
Force at <http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/stfail/>.
2
For example, the World Bank uses the term, low income countries under stress (LICUS), to describe this situation.
3
See <www.iris.umd.edu/PPC_IDEAS/Revolutionizing_Aid/typology.asp>.
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN FAILED STATES AND POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES
5
Finally, the concept of governance needs some clarification. Governance has been subject to multiple definitions
and interpretations. Some definitions concentrate on technical government functions and how they are administered. For example, the World Bank (2000) views governance as economic policy-making and implementation,
service delivery and accountable use of public resources and of regulatory power. Other definitions address
how government connects with other sectors and with citizens. For example, USAID considers governance to ‘pertain to the ability of government to develop an efficient, effective, and accountable public management process that
is open to citizen participation and that strengthens rather than weakens a democratic system of government’.4
DFID describes it as ‘how institutions, rules and systems of the state—executive, legislature, judiciary, and military—operate at central and local level and how the state relates to individual citizens, civil society and the private
sector’ (2001, p. 11). UNDP (1997) sees governance as ‘the exercise of economic, political and administrative
authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels’. The latter definitions explicitly connect the political dimensions of governance to the more technocratic elements of macro-economic management and public administration
operational capacity, and are reflected in how governance is addressed in failed states. These integrative definitions
characterise how the contributors to this special issue treat governance.
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE
This rapid review of the concepts of failed states, conflict and peace and governance reveals that the analytic and
operational terrain for rebuilding governance in failed, post-conflict states is multi-faceted and complex. The literature, both academic and applied, on governance is huge, and that dealing with failed states and post-conflict is
rapidly growing.5 Developing frameworks, strategies and approaches is an ongoing enterprise, and one fraught
with difficulties though progress has been made (see Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff, 2002; Orr, 2004). To oversimplify somewhat, the design and implementation of governance reforms in post-conflict states target three areas: (1)
reconstituting legitimacy, (2) re-establishing security and (3) rebuilding effectiveness.
Reconstituting legitimacy
Legitimacy refers to acceptance of a governing regime as correct, appropriate and/or right. Without a minimum
degree of legitimacy, states have difficulty functioning; and loss of legitimacy in the eyes of some segment of the
population is an important contributor to state failure. Reconstituting legitimacy in post-conflict states involves
expanding participation and inclusiveness, reducing inequities, creating accountability, combating corruption
and introducing contestability (elections). Delivering services, which links to the effectiveness dimension is also
important for establishing legitimacy; it demonstrates government willingness and capacity to respond to citizens’
needs and demands. Further, this category includes constitutional reform, re-establishment of the rule of law and
institutional design (e.g. checks and balances, allocation of functions and authorities across branches and levels of
government), as well as civil society development.
Democracy is widely held to be the governance system with the strongest form of legitimacy around the world
(see UNDP, 2002). Yet in numerous countries the path to democratisation has proven tortuous; traditional and
informal sources of power and authority vie for legitimacy, sometimes constituting an alternate ‘state’ within a
state (e.g. regional warlords in Afghanistan), or sometimes seeking legitimisation through assumption of the external trappings of democracy (e.g. various former Soviet Union states in Central Asia). Experience in state reconstruction has shown that external intervention to create stable democratic societies out of the ashes of intra-state
conflagration is extraordinarily difficult (see Bermeo, 2003).6
Points of debate on reconstituting legitimacy in failed and post-conflict states are many. Fundamentally, some
question whether democracy is amenable to intentional design by outsiders, no matter how well-meaning (Blaug,
From <www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance/technical_areas/dg_office/gov.html>.
It is beyond the scope of this introduction to delve in-depth into this literature. Useful websites that provide a multitude of sources include
<www.grc-exchange.org/g_themes/index.html> and <www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/indicators.htm>.
6
The democracy ‘triumphalism’ of the 1990s has given way to more sober reflections on the ease or inevitability of democratic transition (see
Carothers, 2002).
4
5
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
6
D. W. BRINKERHOFF
2002; Bastian and Luckham, 2003). Others question the expectations that countries emerging from conflict will be
able to take on the enormous number and complexity of tasks inherent in launching a democratic transition
(Ottaway, 2002). There is some skepticism that a relatively standardised model of post-conflict democratic transition can be successfully grafted onto societies with histories and traditions that may be inhospitable to such transfers (e.g. Call and Cook, 2003).
Re-establishing security
Clearly, a high priority activity in post-conflict and war-torn societies is coping with the lack of security. For
dealing with ex-combatants, this involves the classic trio of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.
DDR connects to rebuilding effectiveness in that without capacity to restart the economy and generate employment
opportunities, reintegration will suffer, raising the possibility of banditry and re-emergence of conflict. Reestablishing security also means peacekeeping operations, often coupled with humanitarian and emergency relief,
since many post-war countries have large numbers of internally displaced persons, wrecked infrastructure and
disrupted economic activity. Security is a necessary precursor to stabilisation and progress towards a return to
something approaching ‘normal’ economic and political activity.
On the governance side, the status, capacity and actions of security forces are critical (see UNDP, 2002: Chapter
4). Re-establishing security requires dealing with the police, military and paramilitary units and private militias
through a mix of rebuilding, professionalising, reforming and dissolving. In the medium and long-term, this governance area links closely to reconstituting legitimacy. For most post-conflict societies, civilian oversight of security forces is weak or non-existent. In addition, civil rights, judicial systems and the operation of the courts need
attention. Unaccountable, corrupt and/or subversive security forces are major barriers to state legitimacy, impede
the restoration of basic services and often contribute to reigniting conflict (see Koppell and Sharma, 2003).
Rebuilding effectiveness
Conflict and wars destroy basic infrastructure, disrupt the delivery of core services (e.g. health, education, electricity, water, sanitation) and impede the day-to-day routines associated with making a living. In the worst-case
scenarios, they lead to widespread suffering, massive population dislocation, humanitarian crises and epidemics,
which overwhelm the already inadequate effectiveness of failed-state governments. The inability of failed and
post-conflict states to provide fundamental public goods and services has impacts on both the immediate prospects
for tending to citizens’ basic needs and restarting economic activity, and long-term prospects for assuring welfare,
reducing poverty, and facilitating socio-economic growth. Restoring (or in some cases creating) service delivery
capacity and initiating economic recovery are central to governance reconstruction agendas (see, e.g. UNDP,
2000).
Rebuilding effectiveness has to do, first and foremost, with the functions and capacity of the public sector. Good
governance in this area means, for example, adequate and functioning municipal infrastructure, widely available
health care and schooling, provision of roads and transportation networks and attention to social safety nets. Since
in most countries, effective basic services depend on more than government, the functions and capacity of the
private sector and civil society are also critical.
Beyond service provision, effective economic governance is included here. Good practices involve sound
macroeconomic and fiscal policymaking, efficient budget management, promotion of equitably distributed
wealth-creating investment opportunities, and an adequate regulatory framework (see World Bank, 2000). Failing
and failed states generally exhibit the opposite: policies that favour powerful elites, few budget controls and
rampant corruption, cronyism and patronage arrangements that limit opportunity and siphon off public assets
for private gain, and usually a combination of punitive use of existing regulations and exemptions to benefit the
favoured few.
Service-delivery and economic-development effectiveness relates to legitimacy in that citizens tend to withdraw
support from governments that cannot or will not provide basic services and some level of economic opportunity.
Particularly when coupled with ethnic tension, weak states’ inability/unwillingness to do so can be an important
contributing factor to state failure and the eruption of renewed conflict. This area of governance also connects to
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN FAILED STATES AND POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES
7
security in that if the youth are in school, job opportunities are available and families have hope that their wellbeing will improve, citizens (including demobilised combatants) are less likely to engage in crime or be recruited
into insurgency.
Debates regarding rebuilding effectiveness in post-conflict states concern starting points, sequencing and comprehensiveness; all these issues are interconnected. Where to start in helping new and weak post-conflict governments to get service delivery going, as well as which tasks should follow one another or be taken on simultaneously
are rarely clear choices. Often, donors and humanitarian NGOs take the lead in providing essential services, and
responding to the immediate needs of the population trumps moving towards actions that will build government
capacity to assume lead responsibility (Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff, 2002). Yet, quick-fix approaches that ignore
existing local capacity and/or put off attention to institution-building are accused of creating dependency, reducing
the chances for sustainability and squandering opportunities for nascent governments to establish their legitimacy
through providing services to citizens. Another starting-point/sequencing issue is the choice between rebuilding/
creating central-level institutions or focussing on those at subnational/local levels (see, e.g. Romeo, 2002).
Regarding comprehensiveness, the debate centres around the ambitiousness and appropriateness of donor models and plans for reconstructing effectiveness in weak and post-conflict states. In essence, the question here is, what
constitutes ‘good enough’ governance?7 In many cases, the governance reform agenda advocated by the international donor community constitutes an overwhelming smorgasbord of changes deemed necessary to assure governance effectiveness (Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith, 2005).
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE
The articles in this issue cover a broad range of geographical areas (Central and East Asia, the Middle East and
Africa) and countries (Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq and Sierra Leone), actors (donors, security actors and local
governments and councils) and topics (governance, democratisation, decentralisation and service delivery). Much
attention has been given in research and practice to national reconciliation processes and the construction of a
functional and representative national government. A distinctive feature of this collection is its emphasis on the
role of subnational governance in post-conflict reconstruction, a theme of several of the contributions.
Donor agendas
Dennis Rondinelli and John Montgomery review 50 years of reconstruction interventions and offer eight general
guidelines, recognising the impediments to acting on them. The lessons underscore the importance of: (1) ensuring
security as the foundation for rebuilding governance and restarting economic growth; (2) transparency in donor
goals, which can reduce political gamesmanship and increase potential for programmatic coherence; (3) strong
operational coordination mechanisms; (4) rapid state capacity-building for effective performance (both for
immediate service delivery and security and for longer-term public goods and services that support socioeconomic growth); (5) introducing shared and country-led decision-making.
Three additional lessons have to do with sequencing and time-frames for reconstruction. First, exclusive or premature concentration on democracy and elections can lead to destabilisation and renewal of conflict. Second,
restarting economic growth requires putting in place the basics of a market economy, but this needs to be done
carefully, not as an ideological imperative. Finally, governance reconstruction over the long-term needs to assure
attention to equity, social divisions and poverty reduction so as to minimise the odds of societal divisiveness and a
return to conflict. Rondinelli and Montgomery recommend the creation of an integrated policy and programmatic
response capability on the part of donor countries.8
7
Grindle (2004) addresses this question in the context of poor countries and poverty reduction, not specific to post-conflict, but much of the
discussion is equally relevant to the extreme case.
8
Some countries have created or are moving to develop such a capability. For example, in the UK in 2003, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit
created a ‘Countries at Risk of Instability Team’ to develop a coordinated failed states response strategy for the government. The US government
recently established within the State Department the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization to facilitate cross-agency
early warning, response planning and joint intervention.
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
8
D. W. BRINKERHOFF
Security sector governance
The role of security forces figures prominently in the cases in the special issue (and other cases) both as a contributor to state failure and escalation to armed conflict, and a critical actor in state reconstruction. One of the
defining features of a viable state is a monopoly on coercion and the exercise of force; the state is the repository
of legitimate coercive power. Nicole Ball notes that post-conflict intervention often has focussed on strengthening
the operational capacity and effectiveness of security forces, largely ignoring or downplaying issues of civilian
oversight and accountability. From a governance perspective, minimising or postponing these questions until later
places the success of post-conflict reconstruction at risk.
Ball flags the difficulties involved in undertaking reform in the context of the enormous pressures in failed
states to move quickly on numerous fronts with limited resources in situations where institutional capacity is
destroyed, decayed, or needs to be built from scratch. Security-sector reform, although often treated as a problem
of technical effectiveness, is highly political, frequently in ways that may not be immediately obvious. For example, powerful actors may ostensibly pursue reforms as stipulated in peace accords or agreed to with peacekeepers
and donors, all the while jockeying behind the scene to gain personal advantage.
Ball offers five guidelines that encapsulate emerging lessons from security-sector reform experience. These
include: (1) develop local ownership; (2) avoid naiveté about the politics of reform; (3) link target-setting to local
capacity; (4) increase understanding of the local institutional and cultural context; and (5) plan reforms within a
comprehensive, sector-wide framework that addresses regional as well as national issues.
Subnational governance issues
Sarah Lister and Andrew Wilder examine the workings of local governance in Afghanistan. Their research
focusses on the competition and interpenetration between formal and informal governance systems. They contrast
the limited reach and power of the de jure state, based in Kabul and supported by the international community, with
that of the de facto state, where at the subnational level, regional warlords and local commanders fulfil governance
functions. Based on field visits and interview data, they document the various mechanisms by which these subnational-level actors exercise power and authority. Besides the obvious power that emanates from private armies
and weaponry, local commanders exert influence and control over government appointments, including security
positions. Civil servants owe their jobs and allegiance to warlords rather than the formal bureaucracies that
they nominally serve. This practice has limited the influence of the centre on subnational levels of administration, constrained hiring based on technical qualifications and undermined the perceived legitimacy of
the de jure government.
Administrative capacity and resource gaps at the centre, typical of those in many post-conflict states in the process of rebuilding, exacerbate problems of both legitimacy and effectiveness. Low salaries, paid late, encourage
civil servants to engage in corrupt practices, and/or seek resources from warlords. Inadequate operating budgets
hamper service delivery agencies of the formal state in meeting citizens’ needs, which leads citizens to turn to the
warlords for help, further discrediting the state in their eyes. The authors note that donor investments in the technical effectiveness of public administration will not yield their intended governance outcomes without an overarching political strategy that confronts the realities of the subnational de facto state as an integral element in
rebuilding de jure governance in Afghanistan.
Paul Jackson, writing about Sierra Leone, analyses decentralisation reform as a key element in re-establishing
governance after 12 years of civil war and destruction. The new Local Government Act of 2004 provides for
locally elected councils, local revenue and expenditure authority and autonomous local decision-making. The
Act integrates new formal democratic local governance with the traditional chiefdom system, allocating to traditional chiefs some local decision-making and law enforcement roles, but limiting their control over local resources
(land and mining rights).
While the new Act is intended to increase local representation and accountability, it risks compromise due to the
actions of elites, and to the shortage of qualified staff and resources at the local level. Chiefs have mobilised
to minimise the threats to their power posed by the Act; they influenced the choice of candidates for council elections and continue to maintain control over who may have access to chiefdom land, decide who is or is not a local
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN FAILED STATES AND POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES
9
resident, collect the head tax and preside over traditional courts. They are also intimately involved in the diamond
trade, both licit and illicit. Similar to the Afghanistan case, the effort to introduce decentralised governance to
Sierra Leone reveals the complex interconnections between formal and informal, modern and traditional and
de facto and de jure governance.
Derick Brinkerhoff and James Mayfield examine post-war reconstruction in Iraq to reform local government,
increase decentralisation and create democratic local institutions. USAID’s Local Governance Project (LGP) combined establishment of local councils at various subnational levels, capacity-building for local service delivery,
support to civil society organisations, policy analysis for decentralisation and democracy training and outreach.
The authors use the conceptual lens of social capital to explore the impact of LGP’s activities, arguing that viable
governance in Iraq will, among other changes, require building vertical social capital, which connects citizens to
government, and creating bridging social capital, that is, links across different social, religious, and ethnic groups.
Their findings indicate that LGP contributed to social capital formation through increased communication in a
variety of ways: workshops to introduce new concepts about government-citizen interaction, facilitation of networks across social and ethnic boundaries, formation of municipal councils and support to professional associations and other civil society organisations. Councils and civil society organisations also have increased possibilities
for empowerment. Council members have interacted with local government officials to present citizen needs and
demands, and have in some municipalities served an oversight function. Councils have served a leadership incubator function as well.
At present many of the conditions necessary to support governance changes are nonexistent. The deteriorated
security situation is a major barrier, but another constraint is the enduring strength of old reservoirs of social and
political power that push for centralisation, top-down decision-making and rent-seeking. Iraq is beset with postconflict entrepreneurs and spoilers, and the emergence of a new socio-political equilibrium appears likely to be
preceded by an extended period of instability and conflict.
Peter Blunt and Mark Turner consider decentralisation reform in post-conflict Cambodia, and explore the reasons behind the relative lack of autonomous subnational decision-making among commune councils, despite donor
support. Since the mid 1990s, donor reconstruction programmes have sought to increase popular participation and
promote increased decentralisation with limited success. The authors demonstrate that Cambodia’s cultural context is at odds with the attitudes and values that support decentralisation. Further, existing administrative systems
and decision-making are highly centralised, and actors at the centre are reluctant to delegate to the provincial level
or below.
In this context, commune councils function more as the executors of higher-level decisions than as autonomous
local bodies. Councillors operate as traditional elders rather than as representatives of local constituencies.
Councils’ major local functions include needs identification for development planning (led by higher-level agencies) and some informal dispute resolution; they have little or no financial autonomy. While the limited decentralisation pursued has contributed to the maintenance of peace and stability, its contribution to effective, devolved
governance has been negligible despite the intent of the donors.
CROSS-CUTTING THEMES
The articles in this special issue touch upon several common themes. These include: similarities between development and post-conflict assistance; linkages among governance’s legitimacy, effectiveness and security dimensions; rebuilding versus creating governance systems; local versus national governance reconstruction; and formal
versus informal governance.
Similarities between development and post-conflict assistance
The country cases reveal that post-conflict governance reconstruction faces many of the same issues that face
development assistance more generally, albeit under more trying and difficult circumstances. Similar challenges
include: building on what exists and tapping in-country expertise and commitment; accurately assessing the
social, political and institutional landscape; adjusting donor strategies and timetables to fit local circumstances;
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
10
D. W. BRINKERHOFF
recognising the impact of external assistance on local incentives; and so on.9 Many of the recommendations for
post-conflict governance reconstruction that Rondinelli and Montgomery present could equally be applied to
non-conflict situations as well. Similarly, the Iraq LGP lessons regarding building constituencies, social capital
formation and flexible interventions and timetables hold implications for governance promotion in other
contexts (Brinkerhoff and Mayfield).
These similarities suggest that post-conflict governance reconstruction could benefit from taking more advantage of development tools and approaches, such as participatory appraisals, political mapping, sustainability planning, strategic policy management and community empowerment. In practice, these tools and approaches are
sometimes ignored, due to factors such as, among others, a lack of knowledge on the part of some actors (e.g.
the military) and the accelerated dynamics of post-conflict situations where the pressure for results and the potential for rapid reversals of fortune and vicious circles are high.10 To be sure, there are times when the exigencies of
immediate response to post-conflict emergency needs take precedence, but often international actors remain in the
‘driver’s seat’ pushing preplanned reconstruction packages far beyond what is optimal for supporting the mitigation of conflict and a transition to country-led governance and local ownership. Just as with development assistance
in non-conflict settings, what donors and their international partners do, with whom, and how, matters importantly
in post-conflict societies.
Linkages among governance’s legitimacy, effectiveness and security dimensions
All the contributions to the special issue highlight, in one way or another, the connections among these governance
dimensions. For example, Ball’s article brings out clearly the dangers of treating security sector reform as simply a
question of professionalism and effectiveness. Without attention to oversight bodies, accountability and human
rights—all elements of the legitimacy dimension of governance—security forces can contribute to reigniting conflict and instability. Conversely, the Iraq case reveals that without effective security, efforts to restore basic services
and build legitimate governance are seriously hampered (Brinkerhoff and Mayfield). Legitimacy of the new government in Afghanistan is threatened by its inability to positively affect citizens in the provinces through service
provision, leading them to turn to warlords to meet their needs (Lister and Wilder). Jackson’s analysis reveals how
the design of decentralisation in Sierra Leone has sought to increase effectiveness by relying on a traditional institution (the chiefdom), which puts legitimacy of the new governance system at risk, since chiefs carry some significant negative ‘baggage’ in the view of important segments of the populations. Blunt and Turner document a
similar dynamic in Cambodia, where the context challenges the legitimacy of bottom-up, participatory processes;
such behaviours find little cultural grounding beyond a surface acceptance within the narrow confines of donorassisted initiatives. In several of the cases, the legitimacy and effectiveness linkages in governance reforms, and the
tensions and trade-offs between them, emerge clearly in focussing on formal versus informal governance, discussed below.
In terms of post-conflict governance reconstruction efforts, a number of factors have contributed to a lack of
sufficient attention to the linkages among these three dimensions. A primary one is that the institutional missions of
the major actors in post-conflict intervention emphasise one of the dimensions to the relative exclusion of the
others. The military tends to take responsibility for the security sector; legitimacy is the key focus of diplomatic
actors (e.g. the US State Department, the UN Security Council); and effectiveness falls to the development agencies (e.g. UNDP, USAID, DFID) and their partners (NGOs, private firms). In post-war Iraq, for example, the
separation of responsibility for reconstruction tasks was reinforced by a strong ‘stay in your lane’ message from
the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA): operational actors were expected to concern themselves solely with
their areas of responsibility, not the bigger picture, which CPA leadership saw as its unique prerogative.
Another factor that encourages the separation of the three dimensions of governance has been the templates that
divide post-conflict reconstruction into linear stages. In the past, these have discouraged the kind of synoptic and
9
See, for example, Barakat and Chard (2002) for more on this point.
A staff member of the LGP in Iraq commented that, ‘a day in the life of LGP is like a month in a standard development project’ (personal
communication).
10
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN FAILED STATES AND POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES
11
comprehensive thinking that many have advocated as necessary for effective programming and intervention (see
Ball, Rondinelli and Montgomery). Each of the country case articles reinforces this message as well.11
The ‘re’ vs building and constructing
The question of what is being rebuilt in the governance system versus what new systems and institutions are created is an important consideration. Previously existing governance structures have been shown to be contributors to
state fragility or failure in cases where they promote social, ethnic and/or economic exclusion and inequities;
ignore human rights; abuse the rule of law; engage in corrupt practices, etc. Several authors point out the problems
with the reconstruction notion. Jackson notes that the implicit model of decentralised local government that is prevalent in Sierra Leone is one of restoration of the pre-1972 system. He cautions that the imagery of ‘rebuilding’
governance connotes a return to a system that previously functioned effectively. In fact the local state-society relations of the country’s past were a part of the reason for state failure and the war.
All of the country cases indicate that post-conflict governance reform, whether reconstruction or building something new, is a complex and long-term endeavour whose requirements are frequently at odds with attention spans
and resource commitments of the international community. The Cambodia case reveals that the Khmer Rouge so
effectively destroyed the previous social and institutional fabric that there was little left to reconstruct; rather, the
task has been to build a new governance system (Blunt and Turner). The Afghanistan and Iraq cases address some
of the challenges in building new governance institutions. Lister and Wilder discuss how difficult it has been to
establish a foundation for a new, formal governance system, based on democratic principles, when the reach and
impact of the nascent state are so limited and the donor resources committed to DDR and support to institutionbuilding have been less than pledged.
Brinkerhoff and Mayfield recount the struggle to set up representative local bodies and to build subnational
capacity for responsive service delivery in Iraq under conditions of ongoing and escalating conflict. Local councils
and decentralisation risk rejection as illegitimate foreign imports despite some promising beginnings. Unrealistic
post-war planning underestimated the effort and time required to stabilise Iraq and put the country on a path to
better governance, not to mention the serious miscalculation of the receptiveness of the Iraqis to the American
presence. What the US-led coalition initially conceived of as a relatively rapid reconstruction scenario has shifted
to painstaking and long-term peace and institution building.
Local versus national
Four of the articles in the special issue focus on subnational governance, and the relationship between local and
national. Three of the cases concern governance systems where high levels of centralised control and political/
ethnic domination prevailed (Iraq, Sierra Leone and Cambodia). The fourth case, post-conflict Afghanistan, illustrates the opposite situation, a national government too weak to function effectively outside the capital city. The
inability to integrate regions and minorities into larger polities is a key source of state fragility, failure and conflict
across the globe. The failure to resolve this problem has repercussions for each dimension of governance. Exclusion of regions and/or minorities negatively affects the extent to which the national government is perceived as
legitimate and it exacerbates sociopolitical tensions, leading in some cases to civil war and the breakdown of security; the Sierra Leone case is a clear example (Jackson). Policy regimes in fragile and weak states generally do
poorly at equitable and inclusive resource allocation and redistribution, negatively impacting service delivery, economic opportunity, welfare, and ultimately legitimacy as well. Distributive mechanisms tend to operate based on
patronage and clientelism, promoting economic inefficiency and heightening social and ethnic tensions. These can
be exploited by those in power, both at the national level, as in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Brinkerhoff and Mayfield),
or at the local level, as in Afghanistan (Lister and Wilder).
11
Perhaps the most well elaborated framework for taking a comprehensive approach, including attention to governance, is that developed by the
joint CSIS/AUSA Project on Post-Conflict Reconstruction (Center for Strategic and International Studies/Association of the US Army). See the
appendix in Orr (2004).
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
12
D. W. BRINKERHOFF
Where the local-national governance problem has been excessive concentration of power at the centre and a
dominant elite, governance reform has included a focus on local governance and decentralisation (Blunt and
Turner, Jackson, Brinkerhoff and Mayfield). The basic argument is that decentralised local governance can mitigate conflict for the following reasons. First, it can increase support for peace by transferring some degree of local
autonomy, especially in settings of ethnic and inter-communal conflict. Second, it can place limits on the power of
the centre by shifting resources and control to other levels of government. Third, by creating multiple governance
arenas, it can diminish ‘winner-take-all’ dynamics that can lead to the re-emergence of conflict. Fourth, strengthening local governance allows low-intensity disagreements regarding service delivery, and demonstrates that these
conflicts can be managed. Fifth, local governance sets up a learning laboratory for people to acquire political and
conflict resolution skills that can be used in other settings.
The opposite local-national governance problem is where the national government is incapable of exerting
authority throughout the national territory, and subnational entities are sufficiently powerful to resist and operate
autonomously. The reform challenge in these situations is not simply to devolve central power so as to increase
local autonomy, but to achieve a balanced decentralisation that avoids fragmentation of the state as a coherent
entity. As Lister and Wilder describe, in Afghanistan reconstruction efforts intended to create the building blocks
of a formal, Weberian state are having difficulty finding a firm footing in the shifting sands of provincial governance space dominated by warlords. Brinkerhoff and Mayfield’s analysis of social capital formation in Iraq as an
outcome of local governance reform takes another cut at the fragmentation problem in post-conflict societies. Their
discussion looks at how the creation of nascent vertical and bridging social capital at the local level could begin to
address the alienation of Iraqi citizens from the state and each other.
Formal versus informal governance
Another issue has to do with the connection between new governance structures and traditional ones. Sometimes
this relates to a disconnect between de jure and de facto governance, as Lister and Wilder discuss in Afghanistan.
Their analysis reveals the fuzzy boundaries between Afghanistan’s de facto and de jure states, and the patterns of
interpenetration that make reform efforts to strengthen formal governance so complex. Certain key actors hold
power and authority in both states, and have been awarded formal positions due to their de facto power.
In other cases, reforms rely on traditional authority structures, which risk impeding or subverting the democratic intent of those reforms. For example in Sierra Leone, Jackson notes that the Local Government Act provides
roles for traditional paramount chiefs that allocate to them significant leeway to operate in ways that may undermine the desired outcomes of decentralisation, and could potentially contribute to renewed conflict. Brinkerhoff
and Mayfield note that reliance on traditional leaders for help in the early days of creating local councils in Iraq led
to suspicions that councils served the interests of elites and powerful families; this practice was later discontinued.
Turner and Blunt describe how the hierarchical social relations characteristic of Cambodian culture were reproduced within local councils, yielding the opposite of the participatory and responsive decision-making that was
intended.
Imbuing formal governance reforms with sufficient legitimacy and assuring that they can be effective in the face
of entrenched and competing informal systems is an uphill struggle. Success may be enhanced by better understanding of informal governance and the broader cultural context—a message conveyed by Jackson about Sierra
Leone, Blunt and Turner about Cambodia and Lister and Wilder about Afghanistan. It can be a fine balance
between seeking legitimacy through associating reforms with informal institutions and traditions, and introducing
governance changes that challenge indigenous social and political relations, which in most failed states have been
contributing factors to conflict and state collapse.
CONCLUSIONS
Understanding, and intervening in, the dynamics of states where all is not well, where the social and
institutional fabric has been shredded and violence has erupted, call for a careful combination of the general
(and generalisable) and the situation-specific. Much has been learned about the universe of targets and tasks
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
REBUILDING GOVERNANCE IN FAILED STATES AND POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES
13
required to put post-conflict states on the path to restored or new governance and socio-economic development. Yet
identifying what targets to reach for does not answer questions about how to reach them, or about who should do
what and with whom. To borrow from Tolstoy’s famous characterisation of marriage, each failed (unhappy) state is
failed (unhappy) in its own way. In moving to models, strategies and doctrine, it is important to base them solidly in
an understanding of the particular dynamics of the country and to leave sufficient policy and operational space for
flexibility and learning.
Nation-building templates, particularly when they reflect particular ideological biases, risk oversimplification
and conflation and tend to discount the impact of situational and historical factors (Brinkerhoff and Mayfield,
Rondinelli and Montgomery). In today’s world where failed states figure prominently on the international agenda,
we would do well to recall Robert Dahl’s observation made over 30 years ago: those seeking to ‘transform the
government of another country . . . face formidable and complex problems, not the least of which is our lack of
knowledge about the long causal chain running from outside help to internal conditions to changes of regime’
(1971, p. 210).
This caveat notwithstanding, analysts and practitioners have made important strides towards filling the knowledge and practice gap, particularly in the post 9/11 period. The articles in this volume exemplify and contribute to
the positive learning that has taken place and is ongoing. Frameworks, models and templates are necessary for
understanding and action, and the authors in this collection offer some useful food for thought in refining the governance reconstruction toolkit, particularly with respect to targets of analysis and ideas for sequencing. Building or
rebuilding governance systems ultimately is the responsibility of citizens and leaders in post-conflict societies;
external interventions by members of the international community cannot, by themselves, ‘fix’ a country’s governance structure, though they can support reconstruction and reform. The greatest challenge for further developing a
governance reconstruction toolkit is to develop processes and tools for bringing together local and external actors
in ways that productively contribute to enhancing legitimacy, security and effectiveness.
REFERENCES
Barakat S, Chard M. 2002. Theories, rhetoric and practice: recovering the capacities of war-torn societies. Third World Quarterly 23(5):
817–835.
Bastian S, Luckham R (eds). 2003. Can Democracy be Designed? The Politics of Institutional Choice in Conflict-torn Societies. Zed Books:
London.
Bermeo N. 2003. What the democratization literature says—or doesn’t say—about postwar democratization. Global Governance 9(2):
159–177.
Blaug R. 2002. Engineering democracy. Political Studies 50(1): 102–116.
Brinkerhoff DW, Brinkerhoff JM. 2002. Governance reforms and failed states: challenges and implications. International Review of Administrative Sciences 68(4): 511–531.
Brinkerhoff DW, Goldsmith AA. 2005. Institutional dualism and international development: a revisionist interpretation of good governance.
Administration and Society 37(2): in press.
Call CT, Cook SE. 2003. On democratization and peacebuilding. Global Governance 9(2): 233–246.
Carment D. 2003. Assessing state failure: implications for theory and policy. Third World Quarterly 24(3): 407–427.
Carothers T. 2002. The end of the transition paradigm. Journal of Democracy 13(1): 5–20.
CGD (Center for Global Development). 2004. On the Brink: Weak States and US National Security. CDG, Commission on Weak States and US
National Security: Washington, DC. Available at <www.cgdev.org/docs/Full_Report.pdf>.
Dahl RA. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT.
de Zeeuw J. 2001. Building Peace in War-torn Societies: From Concept to Strategy. Netherlands Institute of International Relations: The Hague.
Available at <www.clingendael.nl/cru/pdf/wartorn.PDF>.
DFID. 2001. Making Government Work for Poor People: Building State Capacity. Department for International Development: London.
Doyle MW, Sambanis N. 1999. Building Peace: Challenges and Strategies after Civil war. World Bank: Washington, DC. Available at
<www.worldbank.org/research/conflict/papers/building.htm>.
Grindle, MS. 2004. Good enough governance: poverty reduction and reform in developing countries. Governance 17(4): 525–548.
Koppell C, Sharma A. 2003. Preventing the Next Wave of Conflict: Understanding Non-Traditional Threats to Global Stability. Report of the
Non-Traditional Threats Working Group, Conflict Prevention Project. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Washington, DC.
Leatherman J, DeMars W, Gaffnew PD, Vayrynen R. 1999. Breaking Cycles of Violence: Conflict Prevention in Intrastate Crises. Kumarian
Press: West Hartford, CT.
Milliken J, Krause K. 2002. State failure, state collapse, and state reconstruction: concepts, lessons, and strategies. Development and Change
33(5): 753–774.
Orr RC (ed.). 2004. Winning the Peace: An American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Center for Strategic and International Studies,
CSIS Press: Washington, DC.
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)
14
D. W. BRINKERHOFF
Ottaway M. 2002. Rebuilding state institutions in collapsed states. Development and Change 33(5): 1001–1023.
Rice SE. 2003. The New National Security Strategy: Focus on Failed States. Policy Brief No. 116. Brookings Institution: Washington, DC.
Romeo L. 2002. Local governance approach to social reintegration and economic recovery in post-conflict countries: towards a definition and
rationale. Discussion paper. Workshop on A Local Governance Approach to Post-Conflict Recovery, October 8. Institute of Public Administration and United Nations Development Programme: New York.
Rotberg RI. 2002. The new nature of nation-state failure. The Washington Quarterly 25(3): 85–96.
Thurer D. 1999. The ‘failed state’ and international law. International Review of the Red Cross No. 836: 731–761.
UNDP. 1997. Governance for Sustainable Human Development. United Nations Development Programme: New York.
UNDP. 2000. Governance Foundations for Post-conflict Situations: UNDP’s Experience. United Nations Development Programme, Management Development and Governance Division, Bureau for Development Policy: New York.
UNDP. 2002. Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World: Human Development Report 2002. United Nations Development Programme:
New York.
World Bank, 2000. Reforming Public Institutions and Strengthening Governance: A World Bank Strategy. World Bank, Poverty Reduction and
Economic Management Network: Washington, DC.
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Public Admin. Dev. 25, 3–14 (2005)